


Stalk On

by Cyphomandra



Category: FRANCIS Dick - Works, Sapphire and Steel, Sid Halley - Dick Francis
Genre: Case Fic, Crossover, Gen, The Royal Navy, Timeline Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-10-24 07:59:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17700518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyphomandra/pseuds/Cyphomandra
Summary: Far up in the stretches of night; night splits and the dawn breaks loose;I, through the terrible novelty of light, stalk on, stalk on;Those great sea-horses bare their teeth and laugh at the dawn.W.B. Yeats,High TalkSid spends another pleasant evening at Aynsford.





	Stalk On

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thisbluespirit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisbluespirit/gifts).



> Thanks so much to my amazing (inimitable and unsinkable) betas, Sonya Taaffe, China_shop and Dashi!
> 
> This is set six months or so after _Whip Hand_ , which I've bumped back in time to take advantage of _Odds Against's_ 1965 publication date, and its reference to Charles' war service. I haven't read _Under Orders_ or anything written after it (I tried, but the writing made me regret Mary's death immensely) so any background that exists in those books will also not be taken into account. _Sapphire & Steel_ are obviously free of such limitations.

“He didn’t ask for you to come.” 

The words in my ear should have stung, especially when said by my ex-wife, but whatever her intent, all I could hear was shock. I hooked the phone receiver between my shoulder and ear, pulled one shoe onto the appropriate foot, and made a non-committal noise in response.

“I’ve called Dr Phillips, but his answering service says he’s in St Tropez at a conference.” Annoyance made Jenny’s voice more steady.

The perks of private medicine, I thought; and the disadvantages. 

“Call an ambulance,” I suggested. I already knew what Charles, and by extension Jenny would say. I pushed my other still-socked foot down into its shoe.

“He won’t let me. But he’ll listen to you.” Which was why she’d called, despite everything. I patted my jacket pocket for the bulge of keys.

“What is wrong with him?” Not himself, she’d said, which covered a multitude of possibilities.

A gusty sigh in my ear. “He’s - oh, I can’t explain. You’ll see. You will come?”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.” 

Hesitation, and then a muffled, quiet, “Thank you,” and then the dial tone, flat and uninformative.

I’d met Charles just the day before for an early lunch at the Cavendish, on his way down to Portsmouth for a ship decommissioning ceremony.

(“Put out to pasture,” he’d said, throwing me an amused glance. “Much like myself, or one of your retired racehorses. A brief ceremony and a few tokens for service, and then it’s all over.” I flaked up sole with my fork and considered an equine version of Charles, his high bony forehead that of a true thoroughbred. “A decommissioned ship still floats,” I pointed out. “And a retired racehorse still runs.” And Charles still commanded, even if it was in board meetings rather than battles.)

Ships sink and horses die, and Charles wasn’t young - I wrenched my mind away from that line of thought and focussed on the drive. It was just after five and the carriageway was a dense wall of red brake lights, the visible tarmac gleaming with a treacherously slippery November drizzle. I fought my way through the honking and erratic manoeuvres of people who’d apparently forgotten how to manage the conditions, and drew up outside Aynsford a little before eight. 

The stars were blotted out by cloud, and the heavier drizzle clung to my face as I scrunched across the gravel drive and up the welcoming broad stone steps. More than drizzle - fog, and when I looked back from the top of the stairs I could see thick grey banks of the stuff, dim in the light from the house, giving the illusion that the house was surrounded by water.

I knocked and the housekeeper, Mrs Cross, let me in, a worried expression on her usually cheerful face.

“How is he?” I let her take my jacket and fuss over my damp hair.

Her frown deepened. “In the drawing-room. I’ve sent the other servants home.”

I stared at her. She wasn’t usually evasive, and the detail about the servants was troubling. 

“Tell me,” I said, but she shook her head. 

“You go in, Mr Halley.” Her jaw was set against further elaboration.

Troubled, I pushed open the heavy door. A fire was crackling in the massive stone grate, and the red velvet full-length curtains were drawn shut, giving the scene a dramatic twist. Soft music was playing from the elderly radiogram on the far wall. Jenny sat in one of the two armchairs that half-faced the fire, twisting a white handkerchief into knots in her lap, and in the other -

For a second I thought it was a stranger, a dark-haired man a few years older than myself, thin and angular with a beak of a nose, and then one of his eyebrows lifted as he glanced over towards the open door. His gaze met mine. The eyebrow descended into a frown, and he looked over at his daughter.

“Jenny.” Charles’s disapproval, at least, was familiar.

Jenny glared right back at him. “I had to call someone. This isn’t right.”

“My apologies, Sid, for dragging you down here,” Charles - a Charles at least two stone lighter and thirty years younger - drawled. When he looked back at me I caught a glimpse of something beneath the apparent steely control, but it faded too quickly for me to place. “As you can see, I’m perfectly well. Too well.”

Jenny gave a sob, a harsh noise that cut off abruptly as she pushed herself up out of the armchair. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll - I’ll come back, I just need - “ She stumbled out of the room, the door banging shut behind her.

Charles’s gaze returned to me from the closed door. He didn’t say anything, just let me look.

There were half a dozen photos scattered in front of the telephone on the table by the chairs, faded old black and white prints. I picked one up. The double of this new Charles stood there in naval dress uniform, angular and awkward, his arm around a pretty pale-haired woman dressed in white lace, the dark arch of a church door above them. Another wedding photo, and then one of Charles on a ship’s deck, shirtless and obviously not in England, squinting at a sun that must have set half a lifetime ago. 

“What happened?” It seemed the expected thing to say.

Charles shrugged. “I don’t know. I ate lunch as usual, then went to my study to read through some documents. Perhaps an hour or so later I felt tired. I meant to go up to my bedroom, but I must have fallen asleep at my desk. When I woke - “ He put one hand up to feel his face, and again I could see just how hard he was having to fight to control himself. “I felt odd. I went to the bathroom to wash my hands, and I looked in the mirror. Then I rang for Mrs Cross. She called Jenny. When she stopped shrieking.” His mouth twisted in amusement.

I could understand Mrs Cross’ response. “Do you feel different?”

Charles stood up abruptly, taller than I expected, and took two quick strides to the fireplace, studying one of the framed photos there. “I feel - myself. Stronger, faster, and rid of any number of aches and pains I’d grown accustomed to.”

It was impossible. And yet - Charles had put me into strange situations before, relying on my wit and instincts to get myself out of them. Makeup and shoe lifts could explain the face and height, but how to explain the weight? And what purpose would such a trick serve?

“Do you mind if I have a look?” I said mildy.

He strode back and dropped down to one knee beside my chair. “I couldn’t have done that this morning,” he said wryly. “Go ahead.”

Charles had obviously guessed my intention. He let me feel with my good hand around the edges of his face, where I hoped to detect some trace of paint or spirit gum or other trickery, and remained there while, with an increasing mix of incredulity and dizzying amusement, I examined the roots of his now brown hair for the familiar steel grey. Nothing. I finished my inspection and drew my hand back.

“Illegitimate offspring?” I was grasping at straws, and we both knew it.

Charles sat back on his haunches. “I think you’d recognise an impersonator.” The combination of compliment and disapproval was certainly typical Charles.

“Well, then.” I picked up the photo of the ship and a Charles I’d never known. There was another print stuck to it, and I separated them. Another ship and a more distant shot, the ship armed for war and steaming past a snowy wasteland, the people on it too well wrapped up to distinguish.

“If we eliminate the impossible -“

Charles snorted. 

The doorbell rang, its usual quick chimes accompanied by a high buzzing hum that seemed to make its way inside my head and resonate off my skull.

“Is there something wrong with your doorbell?”

Charles’ hand was on the door handle. “Something wrong?” As he turned back his gaze fell on the picture I held, and he flinched.

From the foyer beyond I heard footsteps on the tile, the creak of the front door, and Jenny’s voice. “Oh! You must be Dr Phillips’ locum. I’m so glad they found someone.”

“Indeed.” A cultured voice, male, and full of assurance that shaded into smugness; no doubt tailored for the situation. “Dr Argent.”

“What is this photo of?” I held up the icy ship picture. Charles, his face shuttered again, glanced at it politely. 

“H.M.S. Inimitable. An old command. Now somewhere under the North Atlantic.” His tone was dismissive.

Sunk or scuttled? And why, an inner voice demanded, did I think it mattered when something so bizarre was going on? I put the photo back on the table and stood up.

Dr Argent possessed a dapper grey suit, auburn hair, and a foxy face that went equally well with both. He shook hands with Charles and myself, murmuring “Delighted,” smoothly extracted my name and relationship to the family, and then swept Charles back into the drawing-room - “Much cosier, don’t you think?”

Left out in the foyer, Jenny and I stared at each other. She’d put makeup on, but her eyes were still red, and she kept sniffing.

“Do you think the doctor can explain it?”

I certainly couldn’t. “Let’s hope so,” I said. Perhaps he would like being younger; certainly enough people spent money trying. But something this sudden, this inexplicable, felt dangerous. “How about a cup of tea?”

Jenny rubbed her nose. “All right. And - thank you again. For coming.”

“I’ve made other people attend me in emergencies often enough.” And been a terrible patient into the bargain. I followed Jenny towards the back of the house, feeling that at least this goal might be achievable.

Halfway down, the floor lurched beneath my feet with a sickening roll, and the walls creaked with strain. A cold wet blast slapped me in the face and left me blinking. I stopped.

The familiar kitchen passageway stretched out before me, with Jenny walking steadily away. This was the old part of Aynsford, the wallpaper a faded beige with little trace of any original pattern and the overhead electric lights a late and mismatched addition, but for a moment I’d seen dull metal, bolted in plates, and the lights behind safety wire. 

I went on slowly, my good hand on the stone of the wall. Nothing shifted. I reached the kitchen, where Jenny was spooning tea into a large blue teapot while the kettle bubbled behind her. 

“Have you seen anything else strange?” I took a mug for myself down from the cupboard and three teacups for the others, half-hoping Jenny would mock me for my plebian tastes.

Jenny’s laugh was strained. “Anything else? Isn’t that enough?"

The skin of my face still felt chilled. “Did you phone Jilly?”

“And tell her our father’s lost thirty years? She wouldn’t believe me.” Jenny’s hands were shaking as she carried the kettle over. “You wouldn’t have, either.” She poured in the water, steam curling up in thin white tendrils.

It reminded me of the fog. I peered out the kitchen window, but it was too dark to see anything.

“I thought you had floodlights at the back, for the gardens.”

Jenny glanced over. “They must be off. Where’s the tray?” She rattled through a drawer.

“Ma’am?” A young woman hovered uncertainly in the doorway.

Jenny gasped. “Who’s that?”

“It’s me, ma’am.” She took a few steps into the kitchen, her face visible in the light. Twenty at the most, andthe clothes she wore were both too big for her and too mature - and familiar.

 _I’ve sent the other servants home._ Jenny had the tray in one hand and was looking at her with confusion, but not recognition - not yet. I had to get her away before she realised.

“Why don’t you take the tea down to the others?” I pushed the cups toward Jenny, who shot me an irritated glare. 

“Do it yourself.”

“Oh, I can do that for you, ma’am,” the young woman said, reaching for the teapot with the ease of long familiarity, and I could see the exact instant that Jenny worked out who she was. 

Jenny staggered back as if struck - and dropped the tray. It hit the stone floor with an echoing clang, and the buzz I’d heard earlier from the doorbell reverberated up through it. Mrs Cross the younger flickered, and her features shifted, becoming rounder and more childlike.

I got one arm around Jenny and yanked her with me from the room, hoping the corridor wouldn’t change again. She fought me - ineffectually, but it slowed us down. 

“Ma’am?” Mrs Cross said again, her voice now that of a child’s. “Mum?” It went up into a wail, the wordless cry of an abandoned baby. And then, abruptly, it stopped. Silence. Even the buzz had stopped. Jenny went limp against me.

We hadn’t gone far. Supporting Jenny, I edged back just enough to see a pile of empty clothes on the floor.

I couldn’t stop a part of my brain from doing the sums. Thirty years, give or take, so Charles had become a man in the prime of his life, and Mrs Cross a teenager; but Jenny wasn’t thirty yet, and I was only two years older. And if it could happen twice, what would that matter?

Jenny’s weight in my arms was all too familiar. She smelled of violets and amber, the perfume I’d given her back when we were first engaged. The scent of broken promises. I’d sworn to look after her, and I’d tried despite everything else to make good on that, but I couldn't see a future for us together any more and I didn’t see how I could protect her against something like this.

If I could get her out of the building, away from whatever this was… There was an exit through the kitchen and into the garden, and then around to my car. Faster than going back to the front of the house again.

“Oh, it’s far too late for that, I’m afraid.” Dr Argent sauntered down the passageway towards me, something small and metallic gleaming in his hand; too square to be any medical tool I knew. “Do you mind?” He waited politely until I shifted back enough for him to pass, and disappeared into the kitchen for a moment, then came out again. There was something else in his hand, a folded up piece of material - Mrs Cross’s apron.

“Things are progressing rather faster than I’d hoped.” He thumbed something on the metal device. “I might have to call for assistance before we’re entirely cut off.” 

I trailed him to the drawing-room, where I put Jenny down on the couch. Charles, at least, was still there, and there’d been no further changes in his appearance. He had his sleeves rolled up and was frowning over the photographs.

“Is she all right?” He sprung up from his chair and came over to help me cover her with a blanket.

“She had a bit of a shock. Mrs Cross got younger.”

Charles looked taken aback. “It’s not just me?”

“It’s not.” I could see him thinking through the implications as he looked down at Jenny. “I was going to take her away from here.”

He nodded. “And Mrs Cross?”

I looked at this youthful Charles and imagined him another thirty years younger, a child, and couldn’t say it.

“What did you notice before Mrs Cross changed?” The doctor had come over to join us. “Lights going out, a smell, a sound - anything?” His bright eyes flicked over me, intent and oddly ageless. 

I studied him in return, but Charles got there first. “You’re not actually a doctor.”

The man made a disappointed moue. “Alas, no. More of a technician.”

Help, in whatever form, was welcome. “Why can’t we leave?” I asked.

In answer Argent drew back the red velvet curtain. Instead of darkness a solid grey featureless mass pressed up against the window pane, blotting out everything else.

“I believe it may be very dangerous to try,” Argent said.

In the distance there was a clap as if air were suddenly displaced. Argent smiled with cat-like satisfaction. “Aha. Assistance.”

“Tell them not to ring the doorbell.” The words tumbled out of me. The doorbell earlier, the clang of the dropped metal tray, both coinciding with that buzz and Mrs Cross changing.

Argent swung around. “The doorbell,” he said consideringly. “All right.” He strode swiftly towards the foyer.

Jenny stirred, murmuring something about a sore head. Charles put his hand on her shoulder, patting it in reassurance, and she quietened. I decided that something stronger than tea was indicated, and went to the drinks cabinet to pour her a brandy. I could hear voices in the foyer. Two new people, at least, a man and a woman, but I couldn’t make out the words.

“What did you mean about the doorbell?” Charles said, still looking at Jenny.

“It buzzed when it rang.” I didn’t trust my prosthetic with Charles’ cut crystal decanters, so the brandy was taking a little longer. “Did you hear it?” I picked up the glass and glanced over when he didn’t respond.

He was looking off into the distance, over my head. “No drinking on watch, Lieutenant.” His gaze might have been absent, but his voice was a lash. “D’you hear me?”

He still hadn’t made eye contact. I put the brandy down between the photos and the telephone. “Sorry, sir.” It was surprisingly easy to sound like a respectful junior officer. The floor shifted under my feet again as it had done in the corridor, a more gentle pitch this time, and the room seemed smaller and darker.

Charles jerked his chin up in acknowledgment. “Back on deck, now.”

Play along, or challenge him? He still had one hand on Jenny. But as I stood there, torn, I could feel an icy chill in the air, and hear the roar of hard-working engines, and Jenny’s blanket-draped figure seemed to grow translucent.

Before I could regret it I nodded to Charles and ducked out into the hall. Argent’s companions were a blonde woman with a tousled bob and an impeccably tailored mint green halter-neck dress, and a square-jawed chisel of a man in a functional dark suit. 

“- not the house,” Argent was saying. “And I’ve examined the owner. Affected, yes, and it’s using his history, but the source is definitely external.”

The woman looked over at me with a warm, welcoming smile. “And this is?”

Argent angled his eyebrows in my direction. “The owner’s son-in-law.”

“Former son-in-law,” I said, and shook the woman’s hand. “Sid Halley.” 

Her fingers lay in mine, smooth and elegant. “Sapphire.” I had a brief flash back to that nightmare of a dinner party Charles had dumped me in, as bait for Kraye, and wondered if I were doomed to never have a normal social evening at Aynsford.

The other man wrenched a small panel off the wall just inside the door with no apparent difficulty, and pulled out what I realised was the inner mechanism of the doorbell. “You said this buzzed?”

“Sid heard it.” Argent picked up a discarded wire and tutted. “You know, I could have looked at that without taking the house apart.” 

The man shot him an irritated glare and turned to me. “The buzzing came from the bell?”

“No.” I thought back. “The bell rang, and the buzzing started just after, while it was still ringing. Like an echo. And in the kitchen, the tray fell on the floor, and the clang set it off.”

“Can you tell where it’s coming from?” He had the same intensity as Argent, but cool rather than warm; a glacier rather than a fire. 

I shook my head. “When I asked Charles about it, he thought I was an officer on his ship. The room changed too.”

I had the odd sense of the three of them talking, although nothing was said aloud. Then Argent gestured, and the other man reached over to open the front door.

The stone steps of Aynsford led down into a sea, iron dark and roiling under an ink-black night sky. The foam-streaked masses tilted up and down as if the house itself were tipping to and fro, a disorientating illusion that turned my stomach, and the chill salt breeze that came in had ice in its bite. I shivered.

“Steel,” Sapphire said, and the man shut the door. 

“Norsekehavet. The Norwegian sea. February 1940.” Her voice was thoughtful. “The British are laying minefields off the coast, hoping to provoke the Germans into a response.”

The photo that Charles had started at. A destroyer armed for war in an icy sea. 

‘That’s not possible,” I said, because I thought someone should.

Sapphire’s blue eyes sparked with amusement. “You don’t believe that.”

I didn’t. I thought of Charles, and what he might have done in the name of duty. “How do we stop it? What is it, anyway?”

Another charged moment of silent conversation. 

“Time,” Sapphire said.

“Our old enemy,” Argent put in. “And we stop it by finding out what it’s using, given that we already know who.”

“You must have got close if it changed the room.” Steel was rolling up his sleeves. “He’ll know. Get him to tell you.”

As simple as that, then. I looked at all three of them, noting the similar distance in their eyes. Not actually human, I thought. I had no time for the lurid sci-fi dramas the BBC liked to show , so perhaps it was fitting that one had come looking for me.

The drawing-room was definitely smaller, the bright wallpaper a dull grey and the comfortable armchairs more blocky than I remembered. Jenny was still sleeping or unconscious, and Charles was studying what looked like a map, held up to catch the light. In the midst of all this strangeness, the fact that he was doing so without reading glasses struck me as particularly discomforting.

He dipped the chart to glare over it. “Halley,” he said, the tone an order, and then, “Sid?” 

I had two lines of attack: the object or the memory he was fixed on. Asking about the buzz had forced him into the past, so I took the other route. The other three were standing silently behind me in the shadow of the door. “What were your orders in Norway, Admiral?”

“Don’t promote me unnecessarily, Lieutenant,” Charles answered, but it was more his usual smoothness, and he did seem to be seeing me. “We were sent in to blockade the ports, to prevent the Germans from getting iron shipments.” He frowned, and as he went on his voice slowed, as if the words were painful. “But I had sealed orders. A double agent was suspected, one of two officers - I trusted them both. I had to find out. We were laying mines in the shallow water off the coast - the coast - “ His face twisted.

I was losing him. “What did you do?” I said, but the words were drowned out by the shrill ring of the telephone, the handpiece practically vibrating off its base, and the echoing buzz was deafening. I knocked the receiver off, hoping to stop the noise, but as it clattered to the table the buzz intensified, coming directly from the ear piece. 

Charles was looking straight at me, horror in his eyes. I felt a searing unbearable pain in my left arm, at the stump of the prosthesis, and fumbled for the strap, shoving the whole thing off along with the protective sock. 

Five fingers and a hand unfolded from the stub of my forearm, and sensation came with them, each muscle moving like an intricate miracle. “I - “ I said, and my voice broke, and I was shrinking downwards, the ceiling retreating, my physical proportions changing with dizzying speed.

Charles said something I couldn’t hear. An apology, I thought, and tried to shake my head at him. It wasn’t his fault.

Steel’s voice cut through the buzz, deep and implacable, as much in my head as the sound that was shaking me apart. “Sapphire. Now.”

Abruptly I was back to my usual height, my hand once again an empty stump. I stared wildly between Charles and Sapphire, who’d advanced into the room, blue eyes glowing, and then back at the now quiet phone.

“It will ring again. We can’t stop that.” The regret in her voice was undeniable. She came to stand in front of Charles. I couldn’t see her face, but I could see his. Jenny grimaced in her sleep.

Charles looked worn down to the bone. “Don’t make me choose.” 

“You already have.” Steel put one hand on the phone. Frost formed in crescents around his fingertips where they made contact with the plastic. “Try again.”

Charles closed his eyes. The phone shivered into life, its ring oddly muted by whatever Steel was doing to it, and I felt the buzz start again.

Charles opened his eyes to stare straight at me. “Sid. My office. The desk- - god damn you Lieutenant, why didn’t you listen?”

The buzz rattled my bones briefly and moved on. Jenny turned over. “Dad?” she said. “What’s happening?”

“Come on.” Steel’s icy grip broke me from my paralysis. I stumbled out of the room and across the pitching tiles of the foyer. 

The excited squeal of a young child who sees a much-loved parent followed me out of the room. Jenny, I thought, anguished, and ran for the stairs. Steel kept pace. Four steps up the marble turned into a metal ladder, and my feet banged on the rungs. The broad corridor at the top was now a narrow strip of deck that swayed recklessly as the ship caught another wave side on and left the space awash with water. In the distance I could see men in oilskins, untying the ropes that held a lifeboat in place and preparing to launch it. The guard rail was on my left, useless for my prosthesis even if I hadn’t left it downstairs. I halted, dismayed.

“Which room is it?” Steel said in my ear. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block out what I was seeing and ignore the churning in my gut. I pictured the Aynsford carpet. Axminster, the pile worn thin with the years, held in place by brass rods. I held that image as the ship reeled under my feet, and pebbles of ice flung themselves like hornets against any exposed skin.

I remembered a steeplechase in pelting hail, the track slippery as glass, visibility near zero; two jockeys had refused to ride. I’d still had the sublime belief nothing bad could really happen to me on the back of a horse, so raced and won.

I could certainly walk along a hallway.

I kept my eyes shut and stalked on, my right hand brushing the cold metal of the ship, holding to what I knew and ignoring everything else. In less than a minute my hand felt the ridge of the third door frame. “Here.”

When I opened my eyes the door was a featureless panel of metal. I ran my fingers over it, feeling for the handle, believing fiercely that I would find it, and felt it waver into existence beneath my fingers. The metal dissolved and the door opened.

Inside, the familiar contents of Charles’ wood-panelled study were replaced with a bunk bed, a fold-down desk, chair and tin trunk, and a near complete lack of space. 

The desk I could see was in the wrong place. I turned the other way, to an inset shelf above double doored cupboards, and barked my shins on an invisible desk chair.

I reached for the desk itself and found a piece of paper. It swam dizzily between a sea chart marked TOP SECRET in red and an Order of Service for the decommissioning of H.M.S. Astyanax. 

Charles’ ship was the Inimitable. I swallowed down the sudden bone-deep fear that I’d made a mistake and skimmed on through the text.

Something banged on the door, hard, and a voice I didn’t recognise yelled for me to get out, that the ship was breaking up. I twisted around to see Steel holding it shut. More bangs, and the sound of splintering wood.

“We don’t have much time.” Steel had to shout. “Have you found it?”

There was a translucent shape in the room with me, an officer with red hair bending over to read the paper in my hand. The text wavered. One more jump, I thought, and squinted. A clump of black 'x's in a harbour marked, laconically, “mines”, resolved into a single line of text.

_1400\. The presentation of the ship’s bell of the H.M.S. Inimitable, retrieved earlier this year by divers, to its last commander, Admiral Charles Roland._

“The ship’s bell,” I said, as more wood splintered. The red-headed officer flickered out of sight. I swept my arm across the unseen desk, hit a large wooden box; gripped it by a corner and pulled it towards me. I could feel it vibrating. “Here.”

Steel stepped away from the door. Something jutted out of it, a broken support of some kind, and through the hole it had made I caught a glimpse of men clambering over the railings, their yelling almost lost in the sound of metal giving way under immense strain. There was water everywhere, and the horizon beyond was nearly vertical.

Steel reached out and gripped the box. I snatched my hand away as the temperature of the wood plummeted abruptly. The brass fittings of the rosewood lid cracked with a sharp snap, and there was silence..

We stood in Charles’ study, the door intact behind us, the space as quiet and orderly as I’d ever seen it, and smelling pleasantly of Charles’s cigars. Steel caught my eye and jerked his chin at the top of the box. “Open it.” 

I knocked the lid loose with a pen from Charles’ desk rather than risk frostbite. The bell sat inside, cushioned on deep blue jeweller’s velvet. Battered and stained with verdigris, but the inscribed ship name was still perfectly readable.

H.M.S. Inimitable.

“Now what?” I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

Steel angled his head slightly, as if listening, and I heard footsteps. A moment later Argent opened the door and ushered Sapphire and Charles inside.

Sapphire peered at the bell. “Cast in a Cornish foundry in 1938,” she reported. “78% copper, 22% tin.”

Steel gave an irritated huff.

Argent leaned over my shoulder. “Perfectly respectable alloy,” he said to Steel, his tone chastising. “How long can you hold it?”

“Another four minutes.” 

Charles walked over stiffly and held out my prosthesis and its protective sock. He wasn’t meeting my eyes. I took the offered objects and began putting the prosthesis back on, my movements automatic.

“So tell me what you did,” I said, deliberately casual.

“I set that thing on to you.” Wrenched out of him, rather than spoken. His gaze finally caught mine. “I’m so sorry, Sid.”

I shrugged. “You usually trust me to take care of myself.”

He winced, and I had it. “That’s what you did with your traitor.”

A shimmer in the air, and bitter cold numbed my ankles. The ship was breaking up. Argent was doing something with his metallic device next to the case, which Steel still gripped tightly, strain evident in every muscle. Sapphire placed a hand on his shoulder, as if in support.

Charles nodded. “I suspected two men, Willis and Stirling. I left a fabricated map in my unlocked quarter s as a trap. I thought I was being very clever.” 

More than a shimmer now; a vibration, just on the edge of sound. “And?”

“We got word of a group of German ore freighters sneaking along the coast. Willis took a torpedo boat out after their escort, and defied his orders to avoid a minefield I’d added to the map. It put him out in the open and a German destroyer got him.”

“So he was your traitor.”

“I lost five other men on that boat,” Charles snapped. “Yes, I thought he was the traitor, although I hadn’t anticipated the cost. So I took us through that imaginary minefield after the destroyer and my ship blew up. I hit my head early in the evacuation and someone put me in a lifeboat. Command gave me a decoration for courage in the face of danger, and told me that they must have been drifting mines, nothing more than an unlucky coincidence. And Stirling - “ Charles stopped suddenly, then went on. “He was transferred to another ship. Had a good war, apparently, although I lost touch with him. But he was at the ceremony. He came up to me afterwards, introduced himself and asked to see the bell. Smiled. How lucky, he said, that I didn’t end up down there with it. Such a shame the chart had been wrong. And I knew. I think he used Willis as well, doctored his maps and then laid a trap for me in return. No way to prove it, now.”

I didn’t say anything. Charles ran a hand through his dark hair. “So I took the bell home, and thought about what I should have done. And made it so much worse.” He stared at the box. “What should I do with it?”

Sapphire picked the bell up deftly, balancing it on one hand. “The captain always goes down with his ship,” she said, her voice clear and warm, and held it out to him. The frost melted quickly on the metal, dissolving into nothing more than a few drops of water on the rim.

“No,” I said. 

Charles didn’t look at me. “Will it bring the others back?”

“We believe so,” Sapphire said.

“Tell Jenny I’m sorry, and I love her.” Charles put a hand out to Sapphire.

“Tell her yourself,” I said, and grabbed the bell. The motion was enough for the clapper to make contact, and it rang out loud and clear. The buzzing kicked in almost immediately, shaking me to my bones, and the floor dropped away beneath me.

The ship was on an angle and sinking fast, the lifeboat about to launch, and a man leaned out from it to look at me. The red-headed officer. “Put him in,” he ordered, and then his eyes met mine. “Commander?”

“Not who you were expecting?”I asked, and sent the whole prosthesis, bell clamped in tight, spinning out towards him, the strap I hadn’t fully fastened trailing behind. It hit him in the chest and he broke apart into splinters, falling into the dark water. A second later I hit the water, my skin going instantly numb, the shock of it forcing my mouth open and the water into my throat; and then I was on the floor of the study, coughing and spluttering. Charles knelt beside me, concern on his face, and as I spat the last of the water out the grey spread out through his hair, and his jawline became a touch more jowly. 

“You idiot.” Relief was uppermost in his voice. “What did you think you were doing?!”

I started to speak and had to stop to clear my throat. It felt raw. “At least I know when to abandon ship,” I pointed out.

Charles looked as if he were biting back something more suited to below decks. He grabbed me by the shoulder and hauled me up. 

Steel surveyed me. “An interesting approach.”

Argent barked a laugh. “You’re too used to being the most direct.”

“Effective. A pleasure, Mr Halley.” Sapphire held out her hand. I touched her fingers, and felt them – and her companion – vanish, leaving Charles and me alone.

Footsteps, running along the hallway, and then Jenny burst in through the door, Mrs Cross following at an only slightly less reckless pace. “Father!” She flung herself at him.

I met Charles’ gaze over the top of my ex-wife’s head. 

“You owe me a new prosthesis,” I said.

Charles gave me a small smile. “More than that.”

THE END


End file.
